March Madness' top seeds have faced trickier Final Four paths than ever in the transfer portal era

It seemed a perfect and even relatively safe setup for Arizona. The Wildcats held a No. 2 seed in last year's NCAA Tournament and headed to Los Angeles within their long-running Pac-12 regional footprint with a chance to reach the Final Four.

Instead, a sixth-seeded Clemson team that had traveled across the country and hadn't reached a regional final in more than four decades sent the Wildcats home.

“It's all about matchups at the end of the day,” said Tigers forward Ian Schieffelin, who had 14 points in that upset and is part of Clemson's fifth-seeded team this year. “Whether you're a 6 or an 11, it really doesn't matter.”

That's always been one of the biggest selling points of March Madness, that anything-can-and-will-happen vibe on everything from buzzer-beaters and memorable upsets to the best teams abruptly stalling at a shocking time. But the road to college basketball's biggest stage for the top seeds has been even trickier in the four tournaments since the COVID-19 pandemic, with lower-seeded opponents making deeper runs to put more potential chaos into the bracket.

It just so happens that volatility has come amid the growing use of the transfer portal, which has granted freer player movement to distribute talent more widely in the college version of free agency. That's been particularly true with many players carrying a fifth year of eligibility after competing during the pandemic, though this year largely marks the final crop of those players coming through the tournament.

“I think winning a championship is harder, the path is harder,” said ACC Network analyst Luke Hancock, who was the Final Four's most outstanding player during Louisville's run to a later-vacated national title in 2013. "You don't have teams that have just five, six, seven upperclassmen who have played together three, four and five years, where they play a certain way and know each other and there's continuity.

“It's more about how you build your team, roster management, how you can navigate the portal. ... I think there will be more variance.”

There's already been an uptick in that starting with the bizarre “bubble” tournament of 2021, both when compared to the four years immediately before the pandemic as well as going back to the expansion of the tournament to 64 teams in 1985. A look at the combined seeds of teams reaching specific points in the tournament offers a glimpse as to just how much, with higher averages indicating the presence of more teams with bigger numbers alongside their names in the bracket.

And trouble has come throughout the bracket for the teams carrying those No. 1, 2 or 3 seeds, most notably Fairleigh Dickinson joining UMBC as the only 16-seeds to take down a No. 1 by beating Purdue in the 2023 first round.

The average combined seeds of teams in the Final Four was 17.0 from 2021-24, up from 13.5 from 2016-19 and 11.3 for the 35 tournaments from 1985-2019.

It was only two years ago when 4-seed UConn was the top team in an unusual Final Four in Houston, marking the first time there was no 1-, 2- or 3-seed in the national semifinals dating to '85.

Additionally, there has been at least one team seeded eighth or lower in four consecutive Final Fours for the first time dating to the 1985 expansion, with 11th-seeded N.C. State as last year's improbable example.

The average combined seeds for teams in the regional finals has been 38.3 from 2021-24, up from 27.8 from 2016-19 and 25.6 dating to 1985. The biggest outlier came in 2022, when St. Peter's stunned Kentucky in Round 1 on the way to becoming the only 15-seed ever to reach a regional final.

The Peacocks' opponent? Another surprise team in eighth-seeded North Carolina, which went all the way to the national title game.

Meanwhile, only six No. 1 seeds have reached the Elite Eight from 2021-24. That's half the total of the same span immediately before the pandemic.

Just getting to the tournament's second week has been tricky, too.

The average combined seeds since the pandemic is 77.5. That's up from 66.3 immediately before the canceled 2020 tournament and 70.6 from 1985-2019.

The aforementioned 2023 tournament had only two No. 1 seeds — Alabama and Houston — survive the opening weekend. And that had happened only three times previously going back to 1985 (2000, 2004, 2018).

Tennessee coach Rick Barnes has been around long enough to understand the seismic changes across college sports, including players being able to profit from their own fame through use of their name, image and likeness.

He points to the portal as a key factor in these tournament-changing moments, and examples abounded in a Southeastern Conference that put a record 14 teams in the field. There's fifth-year Auburn forward Johni Broome, who started his career at a mid-major and this year is an unanimous Associated Press All-America first-team pick. Or on Barnes' roster with Jordan Gainey (previously USC Upstate) and Chaz Lanier (North Florida) as examples this year, as well as AP first-team All-American Dalton Knecht (Northern Colorado) last year.

“Just goes to show you there's players at every level, certainly guard play,” Barnes said.

Duke's Jon Scheyer sees the impact, too, in terms of teams having to essentially start over every year with roster overhauls whether they gain valuable transfers or lose them, then try to build cohesion over potentially a lone season together.

But does he think that equates to a trickier path now for top teams like his Blue Devils, the East Region's No. 1 seed?

“As a player we were a 1-seed, as an assistant coach — I always think there's a lot of risk,” Scheyer said. “It's how I'm wired, to never assume anything. But sure, I think the thing you have to consider is you just don't have the continuity, no matter what. I don't care if you're a 1-seed all the way through 16. Less teams have that.”

Hancock looks at the volatility as a potential argument toward expanding the tournament field, which has been a multiyear topic when mulling the future of the sport. He sees the path being tougher through the portal mixed with older players sticking around college longer because of NIL.

Still, that's not to say it's ever been easy to win those last six games.

“Outside of the 1-16 game,” Auburn big man Dylan Cardwell said, “it's going to be a gauntlet regardless.”

AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.

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FILE - Saint Peter's Jaylen Murray, left, and Latrell Reid celebrate after their team won a college basketball game against Purdue in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament March 25, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Fairleigh Dickinson guard Grant Singleton (4) celebrates after a basket against Purdue during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament in Columbus, Ohio, Friday, March 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces have boarded an oil tanker previously sanctioned for smuggling Iranian crude oil in Asia, the Pentagon said Tuesday, as it puts into place a global warning to track down vessels tied to Tehran.

U.S. forces “conducted a right-of-visit maritime interdiction” of the M/T Tifani “without incident,” the Pentagon said on social media.

The tanker was captured in the Bay of Bengal — between India and Southeast Asia — and it was carrying Iranian oil, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military operation. The military will decide in the next four days what to do with the vessel, such as tow it back to the U.S. or turn it over to another country, the official said.

It's the latest move by the U.S. to stop any ship tied to Iran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government, from weapons and oil to metals and electronics. The tanker was seized before President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. was extending a tenuous ceasefire in the Iran war at mediator Pakistan’s request but was keeping the blockade in place.

The tanker is the second vessel linked to Iran that has been interdicted by the U.S. military. The U.S. Navy attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship on Sunday that it said had tried to evade its blockade of Iranian ports, with Trump saying an American destroyer blew a hole in the ship’s engine room.

The Pentagon on social media described the Tifani as “stateless” despite it being a Botswana-flagged vessel.

“As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” the Pentagon announcement said, echoing previous statements from Trump administration officials. “International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the enforcement actions would extend beyond Iranian waters and the area under control of U.S. Central Command.

U.S. forces in other areas of responsibility, he told reporters at the Pentagon, “will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.” He specifically pointed to operations in the Pacific and said the U.S. would target vessels that left before the blockade began outside the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for energy and other shipments.

The military also detailed an expansive list of goods that it considers contraband, declaring that it will board, search and seize them from merchant vessels “regardless of location.” A notice published Thursday says any “goods that are destined for an enemy and that may be susceptible to use in armed conflict” are “subject to capture at any place beyond neutral territory.”

The U.S. military’s actions against Iranian-linked vessels, namely the attack over the weekend on the cargo ship named the Touska, have raised questions about the two-week ceasefire.

The U.S. and Iran are operating in “an awkward space where the law doesn’t give you a clean yes-or-no answer” on whether the ceasefire was violated, said Jason Chuah, a law professor at the City University of London and the Maritime Institute of Malaysia.

“The United States seems to take the line that the conflict never fully switched off — that is there is still a state of armed conflict,” Chuah said. “By saying that, it can keep doing things like enforcing a blockade and even using limited force at sea.”

Iran is treating the ceasefire as a pause on all hostile acts, Chuah said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday called the U.S. blockade a breach of the ceasefire and said “striking a commercial vessel and taking its crew hostage is an even greater violation.” In a letter, Iran's U.N. Mission asked the U.N. Security Council and U.N. chief António Guterres to condemn the U.S. for seizing the Touska and its crew.

The U.S. earlier had instituted a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela but had never fired on those vessels.

Blockades and even limited attacks on vessels can be lawful in wartime, with merchant vessels becoming legitimate targets if they contribute to military actions, carry contraband or are incorporated into enemy logistics, Chuah said.

It's harder to prove that a ship such as the Touska is realistically contributing to military action against the U.S., Chuah said.

“The whole dispute really turns on a deceptively simple question: Did the ceasefire actually suspend the right to use force?” Chuah said. “If it did, then firing on vessels or seizing them is very hard to square with the United Nations Charter.”

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior defense adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a violation of the ceasefire is up for interpretation because there were no defined terms.

“Trump announced it. The Iranians agreed. But there’s no formal agreement,” Cancian said. “So whether it broke the ceasefire or not depends on your perspective. ... Nothing was written down.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense and foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the U.S. did not violate the ceasefire because it was limited to bombing Iran, not the blockade.

“We agreed to stop dropping bombs on them, and that’s the basic thing they wanted,” O’Hanlon said, adding that the U.S. still had to enforce the blockade “if you’re going to make it mean anything.”

AP writer Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speaks to members of the media during a press briefing at the Pentagon, Thursday, April 16, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The Pentagon is seen from an airplane, Tuesday, April 7, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)